Light from a Dying Star
by Jixie
Summary: Before they were Children of the Vault, they were just children. Vignettes of Tyreen and Troy, from growing up on Nekrotefeyo through to the end of the game.


**Light from a Dying Star**

By Jixie

Borderlands © Gearbox Software

* * *

**Four**

The tiny flecks of bioluminescence are like magic. She reaches out, fingers brushing against the seed pod, glittering lights dancing around her hand. When she looks up, the very picture of innocence and childlike excitement, those lights are reflected on her face.

"You got stars in your eyes, kid," her father says with a laugh. "Look at ya. My little 'Starshine'."

Tyreen giggles.

* * *

**Six**

Her top left incisor is virtually hanging by a thread. Despite the many reassurances that it won't hurt, Tyreen is in tears when Typhon pulls that first baby tooth. Troy, impatient, yanks his out the next day, even though it wasn't quite ready to go. Within a couple weeks they've both lost the right incisor as well.

There's rarely a quiet evening at this age. Typhon watches in amusement as the twins wrestle on the floor, screaming and slapping each other over some nonsense— what channel to put the echo on, probably. Troy's weaker but larger. He throws himself on Tyreen and goes limp, pinning her. Tyreen kicks and tries to wriggle out from under, to no avail, then changes tactics and jams a finger in her mouth. Seconds later she shoves the slobber-coated finger into her brother's ear. He shrieks, but then goes for revenge, hawking up a mix of saliva and snot and letting it dribble from the gap in his teeth out onto his sister's hair.

"Daaaaad!"

* * *

**Seven**

"Uh, not to question your expertise, Grouse, but I think it's a bit... y'know. Too large?" Typhon asks.

The robot makes a low, droning sound of exasperation. "Of course it's too large. By the time I finish building one cybernetic arm, he's _already outgrown it_, and I have to start another."

This is an exaggeration, but not by much. Both children are growing like weeds.

"So like, you made it too big on purpose? My parents used to do that, always got me shoes two sizes up, to grow into..."

"Yes." Grouse drawls the word out when he says it. "That's the idea."

He's not sold, but it's a moot point. Troy is wowed by the 'upgrade', and Typhon doesn't have the wherewithall to fight both him and Grouse on the issue.

* * *

**Eight**

Sparrow is teaching them about the different kinds of relationships in nature: between predator and prey, between symbionts, between parasite and host. Whose terrible idea was it to let this bumbling idiot be in charge of their education? "For example, a tick attaches itself to the host, surviving by feeding off it's blood—"

"Like Troy," Tyreen says with a cruel smile.

"No, _not_ 'like Troy'," her brother argues, indignant.

"Yuh-huh. You're a parasite."

"I'm not— argh! Then you're a— a bitch."

"Woah! Time out!" Sparrow cries, waving his arms. "Where'd you even learn that word?"

They ignore the robot.

"Then _you're_ a butt-wipe."

"Shart-breath."

"Ugly— uh— wiener-face."

"Rotten korax egg."

It doesn't take long for things to degrade to blows, and Sparrow has to pry the two apart.

But later that evening, when Typhon says they have to clear their plate before they can have any sweets, and Tyreen can't bring herself to choke down another bite of bitter leafy greens, Troy offers to eat them in exchange for half her dessert. All is forgiven, peace is restored.

For the moment, at least.

* * *

**Nine**

With a lack of experience, children don't know what 'normal' is supposed to be. For better or worse, 'normal' is what they live with, what they grow up with.

The twins are only vaguely aware of the worlds outside their own. The things they hear on the echo are fairy tales and make-believe. They don't question where the recordings come from— as far as they're concerned, those are relics, just like the Eridian artifacts surrounding them.

Nekrotafeyo is a graveyard, the remains of an extinct culture. From here the idea of human society, thriving populace, planets filled with real, living people… it all seems like a fantasy.

When they're older and they come to understand their exile, the isolation, they don't see it as a protection. Typhon only meant well, but Tyreen and Troy are united in their resentment towards their father.

* * *

The fact that some days Troy doesn't have the energy to get out of bed is just how things are, they don't know any different. Tyreen usually stays with him, sitting at the foot of the bed and idly swinging her legs. They listen to echo streams, or tell each other long rambling stories they make up as they go along, or sing songs that are equally tuneless and nonsensical, or draw on some of the giant leathery leaves their father collected and dried for them.

Sometimes Typhon joins them, sandwiched between the two, arms wrapped around their shoulders. Tyreen grips his stubby fingers with her small hand, Troy rests his head against Typhon's chest and listens to his heartbeat.

"Tell us about Mom."

There are times he does. How she was the smartest, strongest, most creative, and by far the most beautiful woman in the galaxy. How they'd met, how they'd fallen in love. How lucky he and his children were to have had her light shine in on their life.

Other times a dark look crosses his face. "Maybe another day."

"Tell us about the vaults!"

Oh, how Typhon loves talking about the vaults. They're never quite sure just how much of these stories are true.

"Tell us about how you chopped Troy off me!" Tyreen says, devious gleam in her eyes.

"No!" Troy argues. "I hate that story."

The effects of being conjoined and then detached are obvious on him, he can't cover it up like she can… but that doesn't mean she got away unblemished. The siren markings that decorate her left side are broken up by a network of scars on her chest and shoulder, the 'tattoos' are askew, no longer lining up perfectly. The separation had been sloppy, violent, a preview of things to come.

Instead, Typhon starts talking about growing up on the farm. It's boring and the kids whine and protest, but they're both out cold before long. Carefully, so as not to rouse them, Typhon extracts himself and leaves.

Tyreen is startled awake less than an hour later, Troy kicking her and howling in outrage.

"Ahhh! You wet the bed again, 'Reen! You stupid baby!"

"You're the baby," she snaps and slides out of the bed. It's not even a good comeback, and she aggressively scrubs at her scalp, trying to shake off the lingering sleepiness that clouds her head.

'Ugh,' she thinks. 'He's right.'

"Shh. I— I'll clean it up. Don't tell dad."

"Yeah right. I'm gonna tell."

"Don't!"

"Don't tell dad what?" Their father asks as he steps back into their room.

She can only groan and hide her face in shame.

* * *

**Ten**

Tyreen feels it calling to her.

She feels a lot of things that she can't explain.

The stars. The vault. The power. She's heard stories, god knows she's heard stories, but it's more than stories. It's…

It's…

…this _yearning_. A thread that is bound to her soul and stretched out, out, out to the stars and the secrets they hold, tethering her to them. It's every bit as real and significant as the thread that ties her to Troy, and the thread that ties her to the others— the other sirens.

She's ten years old when Commandant Steele dies, and she feels it as if it was by her own hand. It would be another seven years before she finds out exactly what happened, but at the time, she knows a loss. Power, slipping through her fingers like water.

"What's wrong, Starshine?" Typhon asks, scooping her into his arms, even though Tyreen's almost as tall as he is.

"She's gone, she's gone," she replies, wiping tears away with the heel of her hand.

"Who's gone, baby girl?"

"I don't know."

* * *

Three weeks later and she feels the dangling thread that had been Steele's is picked up by a new siren. Another sister enters the fold.

* * *

**Eleven**

She's in her socks and pajamas, holding a broken pistol barrel like it's a microphone, twirling and gyrating on the work table.

"_And neeeevah give uh-up, neevaaaah suh-huh-render!_"

Tyreen slides on her knees in a dramatic finish, flinging her arms in the air. The imaginary audience goes wild.

Troy, on the other hand, is laughing.

"Come on, join me for an encore!"

"No way."

Climbing to her feet, Tyreen slips on a piece of paper and falls hard on her butt, a jolt of pain running up from her tailbone.

She yelps, eyes watering, and her brother laughs until he's in tears.

* * *

**Twelve**

Echo streams pass the time, when they aren't playing games, or fighting, or out exploring, dreaming up ways to get off this god-forsaken planet. 'Nekrotafeyo'. The name doesn't stir nostalgic feelings of 'home', no. It's a bitter taste of bile in her mouth. It's a prison.

They'd found out how to circumvent Typhon's security system— the prison bars on the cave they live in— by the time they were eleven. Like all children, they're more tech-savvy than their parents were, growing up on the computers and machines that their father had to learn to use in his twenties, thirties, forties. He was a fool to think he could ever contain them.

Outside, without supervision, they stumble into danger: the planet's aggressive native wildlife. Their father has taught them well, both of them know their way around a gun, but in a moment of panic, Troy forgets his. What good is a weapon if you don't have the instinct to use it when you're in danger?

The vanta is big as he is and it bowls him over, fin-like limbs tearing his jacket, and Troy swings blindly. A powerful metal right hand smashes into the beast's skull with a nauseating wet 'crunch', and then the vanta is spasming and shuddering and making a sad rasping sound in its death throes.

Tyreen watches as Troy struggles to shove the dying animal off him. He can't. He's too weak and it's too heavy. She walks over and grabs the vanta's hind legs and—

—its flesh crackles under her hands, shriveling up and snapping apart and turning black, as if it's been burned in a fire. There is no fire, there is only Tyreen. She and Troy stare in morbid curiosity as the vanta burns up, then its body crumbles, collapsing in on itself, a pile of ash.

"What did you _do?_"

"I— I don't know."

No, she's confused. Tyreen _does_ know, she just can't put it into words. Something has awoken inside of her, and she hungers. She's devoured the vanta, drank up its life, its power. Absorbed it. It feels… good. God, it feels good. Warmth and strength radiating up her arm, into her chest, into her belly. It…

"You're glowing," Troy points out, eyes fixed on her left arm.

She is. The blue markings that trail from her wrist up to her collarbone are lit up like the stars, like the bioluminescent seed pods.

Tyreen stands there, examining the pattern for a moment.

Then, without warning, she grabs Troy's left arm, and he yelps and scrambles backwards.

"Shut _up_," Tyreen says with a sneer. "What do you think I'm doing?"

He doesn't dare answer. In a second, it doesn't matter. His eyes glaze over as the vanta's lifeforce flows through her into him. For the first time in his life, he feels… normal. Healthy. Strong, even. He breaks out of the daze and takes hold of his sister's arm.

Tyreen braces herself and helps haul Troy to his feet.

"Wow! That was crazy!"

He's grinning, she's grinning, and at the same time, they both decide that they've _got_ to get home and tell Dad about it. They break into a run— because naturally, it has to be a race, it's always a race— and for once, Troy is able to keep up with Tyreen.

The excitement turns to horror when they get home, shoving each other as both try to get Typhon's attention, words spilling out in a jumble as they talk over one another. Tyreen touches their father's hand and he groans, the skin under her fingers crackling and drying up.

She snatches her hand away in an instant, eyes wide with fear.

It takes a month for the withered patch on Typhon's hand to completely heal.

It takes another ten years for Tyreen to come to terms with the fact that she can never control the Phaseleech ability, and that aside from Troy, every living being she touches dies.

* * *

**Fourteen**

"Goooooood Tyreen! Don't you know how to _knock!?_"

She turns on her heel and slams the door behind her, face burning, but while her brother is embarrassed, she's outraged. "Don't _you_ know how to lock the freaking door!? Dumbass!"

Adolescence is hard. Adolescence while trapped on a prison planet, with only your sibling and father for company, is damn near impossible. Adolescence with the knowledge that you'll suck the life out of anyone you touch?

There's no word for that.

* * *

**Fifteen**

For a second she feels the pain of another thread cut loose, and sucks in a sharp breath, slapping her hand over her heart.

"You okay?" Troy asks, brows knit with concern.

"I… I'm fine…" She looks at him, curious. "You can't feel it?"

"Feel what?"

Unlike Steele's death, the power does not simply spill out into the universe. It finds its way to another, this time deliberate, chosen. Within minutes of Angel's death, Tyreen can feel the thread slacken and then get picked back up.

"Nothing, really?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, dipshit."

It's unfortunate, but Tyreen suspects her mean-spirited, childish declaration that Troy is a parasite was correct. He has siren tattoos, can feed off her powers, is unharmed by her touch. She has a feeling that someday he might even learn to express his own abilities.

Except where there is a strong thread between them, he has no thread to the others, to the vaults. Everything he has, in terms of sirenity, comes through her. Troy depends on her, survives by her.

"Another siren died, but— they've, I don't know, passed on their powers?"

"That's a thing?"

She shrugs. "I guess."

There's a brief silence and then a devious look creeps up in Troy's eyes.

"Hey. If they— us— sirens, if sirens can pass on their powers, do you think that means… you know… you can do your life-sucking thing on them?"

"What, like to steal their power?"

"Yeah."

She has to think about it.

* * *

This time, they find out from the echonet the next day. Angel, the daughter of Hyperion president and famous Vault Hunter Handsome Jack, has been brutally murdered by bandits. It'll be two more years before they learn the truth behind that one.

* * *

**Seventeen**

A lot of hard work, elbow grease, planning, building, scheming, secrets, and lies.

It's all worth it. They have a ship. It works. The ship works.

As they fly into the atmosphere, it feels like the ship is being torn apart, but it manages to break through. Soon after, Nekrotafeyo is a small dot behind them, and it grows smaller with each passing moment.

Tyreen follows the thread that leads her to the power she was born to possess. Troy follows the thread that binds him to her.

To Pandora it is.

* * *

**Eighteen**

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Or, in their case, selfish intentions.

They don't arrive on Pandora bloodthirsty and cruel, that happens after… but it's a brutal place to live, so it doesn't take very long. No one survives on this world without getting their hands dirty. No one.

It's Troy's idea to start the echonet stream. They already know everything they need to know from growing up listening to recordings, but it's here that they discover Tyreen's powers go beyond absorption. Like a carnivorous plant that gives off cloying pheromones, drawing its prey to it, she attracts the sad, miserable, broken people of Pandora. Bandits and marauders and savages, looking for purpose.

She gives their lives meaning, and in return, they give her their lives.

Tyreen's hunger grows, it's insatiable.

* * *

Troy is a good actor, hiding his weakness, putting up a facade of strength when his wanes.

But he can't fool his sister. Tyreen always knows.

She slips her right hand under a bandit's jaw, cradling his chin as he kneels in obeisance before her. It's a tender gesture, a small act of love and kindness in a lifetime of pain, and then he is free, body crystallizing, leaving a vaguely human-shaped pile of ash and eridium.

Wordlessly, Tyreen holds out her left hand, and Troy takes hold of it. Drawing from her, he is revitalized.

* * *

**Twenty**

The only satisfaction she ever gets is what she gives herself.

In spite of the fact that he's the only person she _can_ touch, Tyreen never feels 'that way' about Troy. The deep-seated biological instinct designed to prevent inbreeding works just fine, and no matter how desperate she gets, she never sees him as anything but her brother.

He suggests she commission a robot to fulfill her needs, but no, she wants heat and passion and a thundering pulse. She wants to be desired, loved, the way her acolytes love and desire her, throwing themselves into the pyre just to touch her for a moment. Someone who's real, someone who can withstand her power.

Instead, she makes do, ordering attractive followers to act out what she can only fantasize about, watching them while…

…well.

* * *

**Twenty-Two**

Tyreen feels the thread between them grow taut, straining, and then it snaps, the frayed edge whipping about as it unravels.

Troy is dead before he even hits the ground.

For a few minutes she believes that she's dead as well, because nothing could survive what she's just been through.

It's funny— all this time she thought about how Troy only lived as an extension of her. She never stopped to think that losing him would also mean losing a part of herself.

And yet here they are: their father's trembling hand, blade cutting into flesh and bone, the blood and the agony of being split in two, separated, cut away like a tumor.

Thankfully, the idiotic Vault Hunters believe she's dead, too. They don't bother to confirm. Tyreen lies there, hearing but not listening as they mill about, talking. They're relieved, thinking their troubles are over, thinking they've saved the day.

It gives her the time she needs to stop the freefall, to right herself, to draw her strength.

They never see her coming.

Tyreen makes the same mistake, and after bringing the stone arch down on them, doesn't check to make sure the job is done. To be fair, her mind is elsewhere.

She reaches out, taking what is left, Troy's body turning to ash under her fingers.

* * *

Typhon's whip wraps around her neck. Tyreen grabs it, pulling in an effort to get some slack and catch her breath. It's electrified, weaponized, somehow… acting like a heat sink and dampening her abilities.

(Where was this tech when she wanted human touch, physical intimacy?)

"I'm so sorry, Starshine."

'No you're not,' she thinks to herself. 'If you were sorry, you wouldn't be helping them.'

He has a grenade in his hand. It's more than just self-sacrifice. Typhon is willing to die to save the universe from his daughter, but all the same, he's unwilling to live in a universe without her.

As for Tyreen, she can die at her father's side, or she can let him blast himself to pieces. The choice is a no-brainer. She summons the strength within herself (it's not hers— it's Lilith's, Maya's, Troy's) and breaks free. He was a fool to think he could ever contain her.

She smothers as much of the explosion as she can, and escapes with minor injuries. Her father isn't so lucky.

When Typhon dies, she tries to convince herself that she isn't grieved, that there's nothing left of her heart to break. …but there is, and it does.

* * *

Briefly, she has everything.

Tapping into the bottomless well of the Destroyer's power, drawing deeply, she is finally satiated. Tyreen binds herself to the otherworldly creature, feeding off of it, until it's impossible to say where she ends and the Destroyer begins. Ultimately, she is the true parasite.

The Phaseleech was never hunger, it's always been greed, and now it can't stop. It gorges, bursting at the seams. Tyreen reaches a critical overload and just keeps going.

It's little wonder the Vault Hunters triumph— she's already done most of the job for them.

It doesn't hurt. She thought it would hurt.

The thread that belongs to Tyreen goes slack. Maya's power finds its way to Ava, Lilith's power returns to her, and Tyreen's flows out into the universe, like water through their fingers.


End file.
